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Comment by betterunix2 | Hacker News Reader

"That a Republican-led FCC would err on the side of under-regulating telecommunications companies is about the least surprising outcome you can imagine."

That is not why this is shocking. This proceeding is shocking because the legal basis for this change is dependent on a false statements about the technology involved. It goes beyond just, "Republicans prefer deregulation," or, "Republicans favor market-based approaches." There is plenty of room and a general need for debates about what policy approaches are best, but there is no room for debate about the answer to technical questions.

Engineers and researchers submitted hundreds of comments to the FCC trying to correct the falsehoods presented in the NPRM. The FCC did not simply ignore those comments. The draft rules specifically cite those comments and totally dismiss them as "not persuasive." Only commentary from ISPs was "persuasive" in this proceeding, and the ISPs omitted facts that were inconvenient for them (the point of public commentary is in part to fill in the omissions that lobbyists would obviously make).

Sorry, but I do not buy the "what do you expect from Republicans" argument. I expect Republicans to be pro-markets, even pro-big-business; I expect Republicans to favor deregulation. It is not acceptable to pursue that agenda by ignoring expert answers to technical questions, regardless of party affiliation. It is one thing to interpret facts -- for example, the draft rules interpret the fact that edge services can be accessed via ISP networks as ISPs providing a capability to their customers, which is bizarre but within the bounds as far as policy debates go. To simply dismiss facts that are being presented to you by experts, when you have a legal obligation to receive and consider such facts, is another matter entirely.

Yes, I expect the party of deregulation to base its policy goals on facts, as interpreted through the lens of a pro-business/pro-markets approach, and not some convenient fantasy.

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>It is not acceptable to pursue that agenda by ignoring expert answers to technical questions, regardless of party affiliation

Your entire premise can be rebutted with the policies around climate change. If something as catastrophic and irreversible as climate change can be subject to partisan nonsense, twisting of facts and delegitimization of experts; what makes anyone think that Net Neutrality would be looked upon with logic, facts, and reason.

I personally lean towards preserving NN.

I hope at some point we can return to some semblance of governance based on facts, logic, and pragmatism rather than ideology.

Or, we can accept that ideologies are how we all make the majority of our decisions and then work to create a convincing ideology which combats the systems of power/corruption we're currently dealing with. None of this going to go away with facts and logic.

Change never happened because someone spouted a couple damning facts and shamed people with power.

Oh I disagree wholeheartedly.

We're in the sh*tshow we are today not because of a lack of ideologies: Libertarian, Conservative, Liberal, Progressive, Evangelical, Green, and on and on... So clearly, there's no lack of 'convincing ideology' for any single individual's belief system and ideals.

The problem as I see it, is that the majority of people have retreated into their ideologies and just started tossing grenades and stones behind their respective walls, rather than having dialogue, understanding, and compromising.

And if your counter is that we're just lacking an even BETTEREST ideology that somehow rules them all, I think that's fallacy. Ideology is neither the solution, nor the problem.

It's the fact that ideologies have become ending points, rather than starting points of discussion. Which leads me back to my original point that we need leaders who will govern by listening to ideas, facts, counterpoints, and making tough compromises and decisions based on that.

EDIT: spelling

Which leads me back to my original point that we need leaders who will govern by listening to ideas, facts, counterpoints, and making tough compromises and decisions based on that.

Good luck raising billions of dollars or marshaling millions of volunteer hours to elect candidates that may or may not follow through on promises on any given issue. Where are these wise leaders going to come from that they're immune to the vagaries of party politics and voting blocs?

Honestly, at least some of these issues can be addressed game theoretically... But having a well educated populace is key to most of those strategies.

If people can't (or won't) critically evaluate claims, and vote, then how can we expect the system to work in their favor?

Take Trump as an example of that latter point: I had friends who believed that because he was a businessman he would be able to run the country better than Hillary. They assumed this was true, and even when presented with his poor performance in that role they didn't yield. I didn't even receive a counter-argument. The conversation ended.

As a side note: we already raise billions of dollars every year in the form of taxes.

I really want to agree with you. And in times past I absolutely would have. But I think something that's become clear over time, worldwide, is that getting incorruptible, good, and objective people into office is not really possible - certainly not on a regular basis. Really it's unclear if such people even actually exist. I think most of us believe our decisions are driven by objective merit, yet we all view most of everybody else as subjectively driven. The latter view is probably the correct one.

What we need is systems themselves that take human nature into mind. The founding fathers of the US set out to create this exact sort of system. And they really did. Lacking a super majority, literally a single senator can prevent a political appointment. So on this issue, if the senate really did not want to put into appointee into the FCC who was in favor of dismantling net neutrality - they had that power. When Pai was appointed by Obama in 2012 his views were no secret. The senate could have said no. McConnell could have proposed a new person, Obama formally nominates him, and again the senate could reject. They are under 0 obligation to approve any nominee - ever.

Yes, this would be incredibly dysfunctional - but that is precisely how the US government was envisioned. The whole checks and balances thing we learn about in elementary social studies is specifically about preventing something from happening unless there is mass consensus. The founding fathers did not want a huge, powerful democratic government - they wanted a small accountable republic driven to progress only on issues where there was minimal to no opposition.

You can even see this in things like the bill of rights. The bill of rights does not, for instance, guarantee you the right to free speech. It says you already inherently have that right - it is inalienable. The bill of rights does not grant you a right - it prevents the government from infringing on your natural rights. In other words the view is that governments cannot grant rights, but they can take them away. A dysfunctional government maximizes the freedom of the people by preventing the infringement of such freedom except in cases such that there is a mass consensus of its merit.

The problem is that the doomsday scenario of all of congress falling into one clique happened. Politicians all need money to get elected and stay in office. Corporate donors (and influence) is where that money comes from. And this is where I think the problem is. But I also don't think there's any solution to it. Imagine you take all money out of political campaigns. That don't stop already famous individuals from running for office and their advantage in these cases would be monumental. There are radical ideas like treating political duty the same as jury duty, but I'm unsure how well that would be publicly received.

The point here is that I don't think 'just get better politicians' is something that's necessarily workable in the longrun. We need to create systems that readily accept the realities of corruption, cronyism, and general pettiness -- but then operate in a publicly desirable way regardless of this.

Why do Americans believe trying to interpret the Founding Father's intent is a reasonable way to debate policy? If the opinions of 18th century wealthy men have merit today it should be because we believe their reasoning applies to current circumstances, not because they were the Founders of anything.

I'm not saying I necessarily disagree that "a small accountable republic driven to progress only on issues where there was minimal to no opposition" is desirable today, but you have put forward no valid argument for it.

"government maximizes the freedom of the people by preventing the infringement of such freedom except in cases such that there is a mass consensus of its merit" seems pretty clear. The argument is that the freedoms the founding fathers wanted to preserve are protected by making it hard for corrupt politicians to take them away. The vision of the founding fathers is taken seriously because they were very smart and America has been very successful in many respects.

What the grandparent comment did was bring the Founding Fathers into the discussion, took an idea from them, and then presented it in light of current events. You can evaluate the grandparent comment's idea without including the Founding Fathers; the reference is relevant only to show the changes that have occurred in the last 200 years.

...because we have documents (e.g. the Federalist Papers [1]) that explain their philosophy and arguments. Moreover, significant technological advances aside, our basic psychology / neurobiology remains virtually unchanged, and so many of their initial insights into mitigating the risks of human political systems still pertain.

For instance: they foresaw the problems powerful interests acting in bad faith could cause, and so we now enjoy judicial recourse when politicians or appointees make arbitrary, capricious, or corrupt decisions. The fact that we're discussing legal challenges to the FCC's decision as even a possibility underscores this point.

We understand more about human psychology / neurobiology now, of course, so this is one limitation of uncritically accepting their advice. We also have the benefit of over two centuries of additional hindsight. Still, I think there is good reason to at least consider the opinions of people who would, by any reasonable reckoning, count as political systems design experts of their time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers

>> The problem is that the doomsday scenario of all of congress falling into one clique happened. Politicians all need money to get elected and stay in office. Corporate donors (and influence) is where that money comes from. And this is where I think the problem is. But I also don't think there's any solution to it. Imagine you take all money out of political campaigns. That don't stop already famous individuals from running for office and their advantage in these cases would be monumental.

Many countries such as the UK have legally enforceable limits to the amounts parties can spend on elections. This helps, the UK government is not totally in the packet of big business. The only celebratory I can think of having been elected is Glenda Jackson. Of course big business still owns most of the "popular press".

The way to reduce the impact of money in elections is to make elections smaller, i.e. shrink the federal government and go full blown State's Rights. So much money is needed because there are so many people to reach and marketing costs a lot. Fewer people to reach = less money being deployed in any particular election.

I can't agree more with you and wish so much we as a nation would see the wisdom the founding fathers had when they wrote all rights not given to the federal government belong to the states. They were weary of powerful central governments and introduced competition throughout the system to stay the power of wicked men in centralized systems.

Going back to such a system would require incredible tolerance on both "conservative" and "progressive" sides. We would have to accept that within one nation there would be other states regulated in highly different fashions than our own.

> getting incorruptible, good, and objective people into office is not really possible - certainly not on a regular basis.

How about we make these people complete a PhD in three different fields. After that, they will be humbled enough to be fit for politics. (Of course, experimentation needed for validation of this claim; anecdotal: Merkel has a PhD and she did pretty well so far).

The only protest that makes a damned bit of difference is the vote.

Once in a long while citizens clean house. Major parties dissolve, etc, and fresh leadership emerges. This will happen again once rank-and-file on the left and right begin to find consensus on some key issues like diminishing freedoms, privacy, and corrupt leadership.

It's my opinion that ideology gives one tunnel vision and shouldn't be encouraged. There are things we can ALL be pissed about, let's talk about those things. Above all, we should agree that "incumbency" and "party affiliation" are nasty things.

There are many other useful forms of protest. What makes you think that?

I genuinely challenge you to come up with a form of civic protest that solves a problem, then commit to solving it. Big or small; doesn't matter. Just get out there and do something.

(Disclaimer: I've never voted and don't plan on it, but I spend much of my free time attempting to fix some niggling problems at local and state levels)

Do you not vote at the local/state level either?

No, though I've tried working with campaign teams before in Chicago. The ruthlessness (and by proxy, the system that enables such ruthlessness) of political candidates and their campaigns is something I'd rather not support.

Unfortunately, world history has clearly shown that by the time rank and file realize they need to reach consensus, they have lost their freedoms, privacy etc. (For their own good as so many dictators have said.)

By being passive and blindly listening to your party's claims -- in this case Republicans and Democrats mainly -- you have conceded your power to extremist groups (see gun control, extreme right, racists), corruption (anything to do with lobbying in the U.S. (in other parts of the world it would be called legalized corruption)) and politicians passing last minute illegible bills to laws. If you have under 20% turnover something is ridiculously wrong with the system.

Kid yourself not. It is your choice. You have the obligation as a citizen in a democracy to pay attention, vote and yes put your foot down when they feed you bullshit, like the FCC report. Otherwise, you are being ruled, you have conceded your power and it is democracy only in name. Thus I think this must be a wake up call -- see how many people on e.g. Twitter accepted this deregulation as totally ok and for "our own good". How many people know about title I and II classification? Or why FCC was forced in 2015 to finally classify ISPs as title II? Search what happened in 2005 here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_in_the_United_S... . It is not like ISPs are playing nicely or care about our rights. And us accepting their blatant lies and this farce is the defeat of the day.

The worst thing is you teach the next generation of voters that this is ok and natural. It is not.

And you are lowering the bar by saying "oh it is Republicans they can do that." No -- if Republicans followed their advertised mantra to the letter they should be totally against this deregulation. Don't lower the bar of what you are demanding from your representatives. If you care for your country and your life stay informed.

> I hope at some point we can return to some semblance of governance based on facts, logic, and pragmatism rather than ideology.

This is a great point. We're in this NN shit show because of ideology. The GOP tried to work with the Democrats to craft NN legislation, but the Democrats only wanted a Title II designation and nothing else. Now the GOP has effectively stripped away any NN protections. Both sides holding firm on ideology have landed us here.

No, they haven't, not yet. There is lawsuit being filed by multiple state attorneys general stating alleging the FCC violated the Administrative Review Act, and there is reason to believe they have a strong case.

During this whole process, the Republican commissioners have done many mistakes. They stated they do not need to mind the public's comment period. They even stated they would not pay heed to the public's comments. They cited technological reasons for this, were told they were wrong, and then tried to dismiss those reasons. They refused to work with investigators on the fraudulent comments. They refused to listen to Congress's requests to delay the vote. There have been statements and leaks of Pai acting openly hostile towards the public and catering to Verizon. The other thing is that there is no compelling proof the ISP landscape has changed enough since 2015 to warrant repealing these rules. There is a very strong case that if skillfully argued can demonstrate Pai was acting in an arbitrary fashion against the consumer's best interests, which is the mandate of the FCC.

It's not a sure guarantee, but as I said, the FCC has given the AGs more then enough fodder. It's what happens when you hand the reigns over to people who don't understand the limitations of their office.

Why wouldn't the dems just go along with the GOP and enact NN legislation? Why is Title II so important? This is what I mean by ideology getting in the way. If it wasn't about ideology, then the dems would be working with the GOP to get NN done.

https://morningconsult.com/2017/01/23/thune-net-neutrality-r...

"Why wouldn't the dems just go along with the GOP and enact NN legislation?"

IIRC it would have prevented the FCC from enforcing net neutrality rules at all, which makes no sense. Title II is not an ideological position.

(Edit: Thune's compromise would not prevent the FCC from enforcing net neutrality of some form, but it would restrict the FCC and prevent it from adapting to future net neutrality challenges. For example, it might have prevented the FCC from dealing with new kinds of NN violations like zero-rating.)

If Republicans introduced a new regulatory framework for the FCC to apply to ISPs, which gave the FCC the power to enforce net neutrality rules without the parts of Title II that have nothing to do with this issue, many Democrats would probably support it. The problem is that Republicans have not yet introduced that, and have instead tried to introduce watered down traps that would prevent a future FCC from enforcing strong net neutrality rules.

It's not ideology getting in the way, it's pure corruption. If the Republicans truly believed in free market competition, they would seek to end the agreements between ISPs and local governments that create monopolies. They would put a stop to the ISP's usage of the legal system to hamper competition (Google and Nashville, for example). They would find ways to use federal money to incentivize people to create new ISPs, increasing competition.

As it stands, though, the Republicans are doing none of that. Their only goal has been to undo Title II and then do nothing about the state of broadband access in the United States.

Also:

> Why is Title II so important?

Because right now, it's the only tool we have to enforce NN. I'd love to have more ISP choices and not have to rely on the government to ensure fair play, but money, politics, and business are a hell of a drug for people.

>> Why is Title II so important? > > Because right now, it's the only tool we have to enforce NN.

We have plenty of tools to enforce a thing. We have existing legislation, and we have the power to enact new legislation. We have existing regulation, and we have the power to effect new regulation. We have voices, and we have votes. I am not entirely convinced that Title II vs Title I is the best way to move forward, but I am entirely convinced that it is not the only.

The Telecommunications Act was enacted in 1934, then updated in 1996. That's more than twenty years ago. With significant change in politics and the creative ways in which ISPs have quashed neutrality in the name of network management, Congress has had plenty of opportunity to take notice and offer something more substantial than "Oh, no, how did this happen?"

> We have plenty of tools to enforce a thing. We have existing legislation, and we have the power to enact new legislation. We have existing regulation, and we have the power to effect new regulation. We have voices, and we have votes. I am not entirely convinced that Title II vs Title I is the best way to move forward, but I am entirely convinced that it is not the only.

The current administration and Congress have shown a blatant disregard for the voice of the American citizens beyond a wealthy few. Any legislation they enact will to further enrich themselves and their donors, and only continue to selling of America. Our system is rigged so our votes don't matter in general. The current president ran a "populist" campaign and still lost the popular vote by 3 million. The system is setup so that when Democrats win, they need to win big, and when Republicans lose, they still win. Title II is the best we're going to get in this regime.

> I expect Republicans to be pro-markets, even pro-big-business; I expect Republicans to favor deregulation. It is not acceptable to pursue that agenda by ignoring expert answers to technical questions, regardless of party affiliation. It is one thing to interpret facts... to simply dismiss facts that are being presented to you by experts, when you have a legal obligation to receive and consider such facts, is another matter entirely.

From where I sit, the particular observation you're making about how policy has been treated when it comes to Net Neutrality issues looks exactly like how the Republican party behaves generally. Whether it's about net neutrality, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, climate change, stimulative effects of tax policy, health care -- it sure looks like many Republican positions are primarily arrived at and founded in the profit and power aspirations of a narrow constituency rather than observation and study, and that "deregulation" and "market-based" approaches are primarily invoked as tools or even just fig leaves where they appear useful.

Net Neutrality just happens to be one example where the audience here is predominately familiar enough with the relevant practical issues that it's easy to see.

>That is not why this is shocking. This proceeding is shocking because the legal basis for this change is dependent on a false statements about the technology involved. It goes beyond just, "Republicans prefer deregulation," or, "Republicans favor market-based approaches." There is plenty of room and a general need for debates about what policy approaches are best, but there is no room for debate about the answer to technical questions.

Haha. Try working in education or, gasp, environmental science, if you think that the contestability of simple facts is shocking.

One could argue that the democrats have an anti-science view on gender. The newest argument from the far left is that there are no physiological differences between man and woman. Biology says otherwise.

The best thing you can do is realize everyone is an idiot and think for yourself rather than the party.

There's a large difference between the Democrats and the far left.

No, the science said there’s no physiological difference between the male and female _brain_. Big difference there, chief.

There is no doubt that Democrats sometimes ignore facts and expert opinions. That is a normal part of the political process.

The problem is that in recent months Republicans seem to always ignore the facts being presented to them. That is beyond "politics as usual" and is dangerous and destructive to our country.

Which Democrat/s said this? A blog / site claiming to be far left != Democrats. Saying those in government believe what the some member of the general public believes is not a logical train of thought.

> what do you expect from Republicans

Disclaimer: I am a canadian citizen.

What I expect from republicans is the opposite of evidence based policy making. None of their policies are supported or motivated by evidence. Pick one from taxes to gun control to sex education.

All politicians occasionally lie about the facts; that is the nature of politics. Yet it was not that long ago that Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to base their policy proposals on (actual) evidence. The decline has been happening for a long time, but in the past decade Republicans have completely abandoned the idea of interpreting (actual) facts from a conservative perspective and have instead come to rely only on "alternative facts" (I believe in Canada you would say "fantasies" but I am not Canadian).

Put another way, I like to remind people that it is possible to be an intelligent conservative, despite the image the Republican party has been projecting lately.

> Put another way, I like to remind people that it is possible to be an intelligent conservative, despite the image the Republican party has been projecting lately.

It's an inevitable truth, with half the country on "either side", that any given side will have a bevy of smart, reasonable, sane people... It's high time to start distinguishing the corporatists, the fascists, and outright liars from "conservatism".

At the same time: with the crusade against reality, common sense, and collective action on long term problems the GOP has wholeheartedly embraced since the 90s (along with the media barons), I think it's high time we remembered that before the 90s we had liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats who weren't afraid of those labels.

The problem isn't that conservatives are "dumb" or "crazy". The problem is that smart conservatives haven't put the GOPs feet to the fire, or changed party affiliation en masse, or primaried the teapartiers to a degree that the tribalism FOX News fosters is offset.

Both parties are irrational, but about different things. Both largely shaft their base and serve different segments of the oligarchy.

Informed gun advocates can actually make a pretty compelling case against gun control, but few are interested in listening. Canada's gun control IIRC isn't that much stricter than the US's, yet there's significantly less gun crime. As Michael Moore pointed out in "Bowling for Columbine" culture seems to play a significant part.

That's interesting but I haven't heard any of these compelling cases. All I see is fear mongering from the NRA.

I'd argue that there isn't a good argument against gun control. The 2nd amendment gives US citizens the right to bear arms but pretty much any sane person will agree that there should be control over some arms. You aren't allowed to build a nuke or make sarin gas in your back yard. If everyone agrees that control over some weapons is a good idea then why would guns specifically be exempt from regulation?

Here are a few questions I'd like to see answered by someone who is against gun control: Should we allow the sale of devices that modify guns to fire at a rate of 100s of rounds a minute? Should we allow the sale of guns to people with a history of violent crime? Are there mental illnesses that should prevent someone from owning a gun? Should we require a cooling down period between when a person decides to buy a gun and when the actual purchase goes through? Are there any places we should not allow people to go while armed with a gun?

Our gun control laws are significantly stricter.

The party of deregulation cannot base its policy goals on facts, by definition. Because the idea that regulations and government intervention are universally bad and all sectors should be deregulated is a dogma that has been disproven by facts many times. So any party with that ideology goes against facts.

For example, in healthcare, it's more than proven by countless studies that countries that provide universal healthcare not only provide better healthcare by almost any metric, but also spend much less in it than e.g. the US. So anyone that defends the broad idea that government intervention is bad goes against facts, period (as does someone that defends the idea that it's always good, of course - the only position compatible with facts is that some sectors may need more regulation and some may need less, on a case-by-case basis, with some individual cases arguable).

So what you are saying is that the republican party in its current form is unvotable. I agree. Even people holding dear republican aligned beliefs should take note and realize that the party is not able to act aligned with their own interest.

I guess partisanship might simply be a huge problem because democrats can‘t recognize republicans as republicans any more - still because there are only 2 relevant parties - republicans don‘t see an alternative to the GOP and still go for the „in theory better aligned“ party. That should give any American pause to think and highlight the importance of choice when it comes to politics. Why not create a new republican party?

>Why not create a new republican party?

The system is heavily weighted in favor of the duopoly (televised debates, etc.). Fixing that might increase the odds a third party would be able to be a genuine contender, rather than simply splitting one side's vote.

Do you have examples of outright falsehoods?

Among other things, the rules claim that DNS is an integral part of the service ISPs provide. The rules also claim that using a third party server requires unusual configuration on the part of consumers. That is false: an ISP could choose not to provide any DNS service and configure their customers' equipment to use a third party server.

(Amazingly enough, DNS is one of the central points in the FCC's argument that ISPs provide an information service.)

While I suppose if you are in to nitpicking it's technically wrong but it's a generalisation that is excusable. It's not as if they are saying something inexcusably erroneous, like for example that JSON is the protocol used to route packets.

In effect I'm pretty certain that the vast majority of ISPs are running their own DNS servers. Making this point rather unimportant.

Any other technical inaccuracies?

"It's not as if they are saying something inexcusably erroneous, like for example that JSON is the protocol used to route packets."

They also suggested the DNS is like a proxy server (in their words, a "gateway") rather than a directory service. Does that count?

"Any other technical inaccuracies?"

That consumers continue to rely on transparent caching and that caching is a core ISP service. The FCC dismissed comments pointing out that TLS breaks transparent caching on the basis that there are websites that do not use TLS.

The order also claims that because people are able to access websites via an ISP network, the ISP provides people with the capability of whatever those websites do (e.g. under the order's reasoning, Verizon is providing me with the capability to have this conversation with you). You can argue that is an opinion and not a fact, but the order does not apply it consistently; for example, it does not assert that a phone company is providing an information service by virtue of its customers' ability to use a dialup ISP.

The order claims that by connecting to your ISP's network, you are receiving, "...computer access by multiple users to a computer server...that provides access to the Internet." Maybe that is just how the FCC interprets routers, but again it is not being consistently applied e.g. to the phone system.

If you want more, go read the order; the technical analysis is not very long.

Yes referring to a DNS server as a gateway is obviously wrong.

I'm not aware of how much caching is used, but to my knowledge is not that common as it would introduce a lot of problems for developers. This is also wrong.

How much of their arguments are based on DNS and caching?

If that's the best example of a 'falsehood' the ISPs presented then I'm not surprised the ISPs won. What kind of consumer ISP doesn't provide DNS servers? And in which universe would it be acceptable to sign up for a new ISP and discover DNS resolution didn't work?

Yes, in theory ISPs can outsource it, in theory a company can outsource everything. That doesn't make any difference to arguments about whether it's an integral part of the service though.

Your argument is equivalent to saying that ISPs can "outsource" email to third-party services like Gmail and Outlook. That is an awfully stretched interpretation of what it means to "provide" or to "outsource" a service. ISPs do not need to coordinate with third party DNS servers to have their customers use those servers, any more than they must coordinate with third party email providers.

There are plenty more falsehoods in the order. The order states that DNS is analogous to a gateway server that translates addresses and not analogous to a directory service. The order claims that transparent caching is a critical aspect of ISP service that users have come to depend on, and dismisses comments pointing out that numerous modern web standards break transparent caching. The order states that the service an ISP provides is a "multi-user computer server" through which consumers access the Internet and ignores the fact that most consumers receive public IP addresses and are technically connected directly to the Internet (and that, technically, it is possible to host edge services using a broadband connection, even if doing so is rare). You can go read the order if you want more examples.

The Tax Plan will pay for itself.

That is an outright falsehood.

"Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), Congress's nonpartisan scorekeeper, predicted that the Senate tax bill would add about 0.1 percent more a year to growth over the next decade, far less than what Treasury says. JCT took into account the economic effects of the tax cuts on individual and business taxes, but not other policy changes advocated by the administration, such as welfare reform. The JCT says the Senate bill's total cost would be $1 trillion after considering growth effects.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/11/the-t...

http://thehill.com/policy/finance/364415-wharton-study-gop-t...

So your 'evidence' is based on a group that purports to see the economic future? That's hardly evidence.

> To simply dismiss facts that are being presented to you by experts, when you have a legal obligation to receive and consider such facts, is another matter entirely.

That makes it sound like you can sue the FCC for not meeting their legal obligations here. Is that viable?

If I'm interpreting you correctly, you can totally sue the FCC for matters like this, and in fact, people are doing just that. [1]

1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/state-attorneys-...

Marvellous! :)

That's a silly expectation for a party that denies science whenever it's inconvenient. Climate change, the war on drugs, abortion, and more are all examples of this. This is the party of anti-intellectualism and anti-science, yet somehow you expect them to treat the Internet differently?

Most of drug, abortion policy is due to values, not science.

You're corrupting the notion of science to say otherwise.

Are you saying that it's good to base drug and abortion policies on values even though science indicates that those value based policies do more societal harm than good?

Is it a good policy to harm people as long as you are faithful to some set of values?

Science can't really measure 'societal harm', it's not a well defined concept. The moment government delegates what 'societal harm' and 'societal benefit' mean to a bunch of self-proclaimed scientists they've effectively given up on democracy and delegated to a dictatorship of doctorates. But history shows us that having a PhD is hardly a magic talisman against dangerous or delusional thinking.

Ok. What about the cases when value based policies have scientifically measurable effects exactly opposite to stated also value based goals of the policy?

I.e. to reduce teen pregnancies we create policy of abstinence only sex education. You can measure that this policy causes exactly opposite effect yet value based lawmakers cling to it.

As for scientific inability to objectively define societal harm...

That's what's beautiful in science. You can define it any way you like and then measure how well policy causes the effects fulfilling the definition. You can define it as "less people addicted" or "less addicts homeless" or "less addicts without steady jobs" or "less people jailed for non violent crime" or "less violent crime". Definitions are plenty. But if you ignore any measurements by any definitions and make laws just based on your values then you are doing favor to noone.

They are presumably evaluating the benefit in ways that are wider than just teen pregnancy rates (i.e. they probably assume that other policies would cause fewer pregnancies but more teenage sex and their real goal is to reduce teenage sex).

Not that I agree with teaching abstinence to teenagers, that's daft. But I've learned over the years that simplifying an apparently rational adult's views down to a single factor "it's so obvious they must be idiots" analysis usually leads to poor analysis.

> their real goal is to reduce teenage sex

I don't get it. When they are in position of power they secretly want teenagers to have less sex, but they don't tell that anybody, instead they enact policy that they think will do that loudly claiming it is to reduce teen pregnancies despite the scientific fact it does exactly opposite thing....

This is beyond silly scenario. Way simpler explanation is that they simply ignore the facts when they counter their believes and cultivate illusion they will still be right in the end despite available and mounting evidence to the contrary.

Everyone agrees teen pregnancy is bad. It's a bipartisan issue. Not everyone agrees teen sex in general is bad. So it makes sense for them to hang their preferred policy on that issue.

Yes, you can assume your opponents are just thick as bricks and randomly generate policies with no basis. You aren't ever going to make political progress that way though. You'll just irritate them and build support for them: "you're too stupid to have an opinion" is a vote winning position in no democracies ever.

> Everyone agrees teen pregnancy is bad.

Apparently they don't agree, at least not as bad as teen sex since they are willing to, under false pretense, enact policy that factually increases teen pregnancy rates just to possibly decrease teen sex.

They are willing to lie to their constituents to gain support of their opposition. Not to mention that they harm both sides on yhe issue of teen pregnancy, not to mention actual teens.

No matter how you spin it it still doesn't sound good. Even worse. I'd prefer to think my opponent as misguided not machiavellian and malicious towards his own supporters.

I did not say otherwise. I completely agree. That is exactly the problem. Policy is based on people's delusions and stupidity, not science.

Whether there are mistakes in the official documents doesn't change anything about the policy. They weren't persuaded because they didn't receive a persuasive argument about why net neutrality is supposed to help. That doesn't mean they weren't persuaded that some of the "facts" were wrong, it means that they weren't persuaded in terms of opinions. The arguments of the ISP are obviously biased and that should surprise nobody. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume the same thing about tech companies. Is e.g. Netflix unbiased when the net neutrality question pretty much came up in regards to Netflix? You would have to be insane to claim that Netflix (or Google, or Facebook, or Reddit) aren't supporting this (at least to some extent) for the sake of increasing their own profit margins.

The Right is arguing for a free market economy and decreased regulation not because they are "going against the facts." There is no fact stating that "net neutrality is necessary for the world to function" or "internet is a human right" or whatever. All of these things are opinions. You have the opinion that net neutrality is needed, but there is no fact backing that statement.

> It is not acceptable to pursue that agenda by ignoring expert answers to technical questions

Here's what you're missing: they don't oppose net neutrality because of what the ISPs said about it. They oppose it because it is a regulation that limits the free market. There is no fact or fiction to this opinion, it's like saying "because there's facts to show that speech can hurt people, free speech should be restricted." I agree that speech can hurt someone, but I disagree that it should be restricted. Does that mean I'm fighting the facts here?

"That doesn't mean they weren't persuaded that some of the "facts" were wrong"

Why did they repeat the false statements from the NPRM in the final draft is that is true? Why did they dismiss comments correcting falsehoods in the NPRM as not persuasive?

"it means that they weren't persuaded in terms of opinions"

I am not talking about opinions. I am talking about the details of core Internet technologies like IP, DHCP, DNS, etc. The rule change was based on an argument that ISPs meet the legal definition of an "information service." To make that argument the FCC's NPRM and the final draft make several false statements about the technical details of the Internet.

Whether or not net neutrality regulation is proper is a different matter. This order actually removes net neutrality requirements as a side effect. What the order actually does is change the FCC's official legal classification of broadband Internet service from "telecommunications service" to "information service." The 2015 rule change also involved changing ISP classification, in response to a successful court challenge to earlier net neutrality regulations that were based on the "information service" classification. Basically, the courts determined that an "information service" cannot be subject to net neutrality rules, because that is a "common carrier" requirement that can only be imposed on a "telecommunication service."

"they don't oppose net neutrality because of what the ISPs said about it"

Maybe so, but in terms of the technical details this entire order is predicated on, the FCC for the most part cites the comments of ISPs as the truth, and dismisses everything else.

> The rule change was based on an argument that ISPs meet the legal definition of an "information service."

It was an excuse and as such it doesn't have to be real. ISPs donated 100mil$ to the congress. The only reason for an excuse is that they couldn't say "Hey, NNaggers, you haven't paid us nearly as much as ISPs"

ISPs are just more aware than idelistically arogant silicon valley what it means to enter public political discourse. You do it with cash, arguments are secondary and just a way of spinning the decision that has already been made with money.

The core issue here is surely not Dems vs Reps but rather that there's a meaningful difference in law between "information service" and "telecommunications service". This is the kind of vague regulatory language that causes so many fights in the halls of power.

Can someone reasonably argue an ISP is an information service? Hell yes! The internet started out by being called "the information superhighway", I guess some of us here are old enough to remember that. The internet is literally used to retrieve information, that's all it does. If an ISP is the on-ramp to the information superhighway then it can obviously be classified as an information service.

Can someone else reasonably argue an ISP is a telecommunications service? Hell yes! ISPs move packets around, they may also provide other forms of information on top, but their core service is the movement of data over wires: surely the essence of being telecoms.

In such arguments it's important to take a step back and realise it can legitimately go either way. The problem is not the players, it's the game. And the only way to fix that is to change the rules of the game. Instead of bickering about the exact bucket into which ISPs fall, pass a new law that is explicitly targeting ISPs and say explicitly what they can or cannot do.

"The internet is literally used to retrieve information, that's all it does."

That is false. The Internet supports communication between the end points; information retrieval can be built using communication, but the Internet itself is more than that. For example, it is also possible to use the Internet for two-way voice communication (VoIP).

What is important to remember about the "information service" classification is that it has a specific legal meaning that was meant to capture the service provided by AOL, Compuserve, and other early consumer ISPs. At the time Internet access was just one of many features provided by online services, and some truly acted as "gateways" and did not us IP for the last-mile connection. Obviously that is not what ISP service looks like today; the FCC had to really dig to even find examples of ISPs providing something that meets the "information service" definition (the best they could come up with is DNS and transparent caching).

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